Notes on killing Lich King, for DK tanks

Splug has offered a few tips on tanking the Lich King, which are worth noting. Interesting question there about Unholy possibly being useful, and on death drip the phase 1 [ more...]

Bone shield has 2s cooldown

A writer on EJ did enough tests to confirm the length of [Bone Shield] internal cooldown, for each charge to be used up: 2 seconds. It might be slightly lower [ more...]

Interaction of rune strike with melee haste

I wanted to share a snippet on this finding I made whilst trying to verify the value of [Improved Icy Talons] in my previous analysis.

I thought at first Kahorie’s had [ more...]

Unbreakable armour, damage reduction

I put together a quick spreadsheet to work out what damage reduction you get from [Unbreakable Armor]. In my gear, approximately, I’d take 13.5% less damage when it’s up than [ more...]

Tanking to be less squishy

DK tanks can feel squishy compared to block-tanks in 5-mans. You can offset a lot of this through skill. We have a pretty impressive arsenal to use.

Here are some important [ more...]

Weapon speed effect on dual-wield tanking

Dual-wield frost tanking threat is effected by the weapon speed.

My weapons. I have two: Black Icicle, and I also have two Rimefang’s Claw. They’re not hard to get, just takes [ more...]

Dual-wield, weapon speed and expertise

Frost dual-wield tanking is very popular now. Six months ago, many people were violently against the idea. A year ago, it was so bad I put up a sticky on [ more...]

Unholy, not so bad?

Just wanted you to know, I checked Unholy vs Frost and Blood in Kahorie’s sim, and the TPS gap I’d seen in earlier simulations has been closed somewhat. This is [ more...]

On Improved Icy Talons: melee haste buff

Improved Icy Talons

This is a really important buff, providing melee haste like a talented windfury totem. Either you provide it or a shaman does. In a 25-man raid, you should [ more...]

Frost talents by the point

For Frost tanks, what threat values do some of these talents provide?

chill of the grave: +1.6% with Icecrown dodge-nerf radiance, 1.8% outside it (tested by going from 1 to 2 points)
scent [ more...]

Two blood tank extremes

Blood is so flexible. You can spec into survival, single or AOE threat. What’s the threat you gain from a heavy threat build compared to one for survival?

Survival

Here’s a really [ more...]

Frost is intended to dual-wield

Blizzard have given a unequivocal statement that Frost is designed for dual-wielding. That two-handed Frost will not, and is not intended to, give the same DPS (for raiding) as dual-wield [ more...]

DK spec threat comparison

I have verified some of the threat comparisons using the latest version of Kahorie’s sim. It’s had a few tweaks so I wanted to see if that refinement had led [ more...]

Best tank spec in 3.3

For raids, I’d go with blood or frost.

Here are my posts with much more detail.

Patch
Blood
Frost
Unholy

3.3
blood 3.3
Frost 3.3 spec here or dual-wield
Unholy tanking 3.3

Feb 22, 2010 update: Unholy should not be [ more...]

Blood tank spec in 3.3

Blood remains the best single-target raid tank spec.

For blood, nothing changed in 3.3 from 3.22, so you don’t really need to respec. You might go into will of the [ more...]

Frost tank spec in 3.3

Frost tanking has always been and will remain in 3.3 a very solid choice. You can tank with either dual-wield or a two-handed weapon and both are viable. DW is [ more...]

Warriors from the swiss army, DKs from lego

I like warrior tanks, they have so many abilities really they deserve to be called the swiss army knife of tanks. Warriors can intercept and charge, interrupt/silence many ways, cancel [ more...]

What is the frost, unholy or blood rotation?

I get a lot of questions like “what’s the rotation for that spec?” Rotation is like Death Knight basics, and since I write on more advanced tanking questions, it’s not [ more...]

Unholy tank in 3.3

What is the best Death Knight Unholy tank spec in 3.3? I set out to simulate the various talent choices to find the highest threat unholy DK tank build. Below [ more...]

Rawr, tank DK updated

Rawr, the multi-faceted simulation tool, has had a developer working on the DK tank module for a while now. It has just been updated to reflect the 3.22 changes also.

Rawr [ more...]

Dreadplate blood hybrid spec, no threat

A poster on dk.info was wondering about this hybrid spec, probably best called Dreadplate Blood, 21/41/5.

It takes a lot of Frost talents, but then goes into blood for some nice [ more...]

Where to point the last few blood tank talent points

Blood tanks have so many variations in spec. You can grab talents to emphasise raid buffs or single-target threat or AOE threat. There’s even Will of the Necropolis, which is [ more...]

Kahorie simulator for DKs

I’m going to have a single post which lets people download the XML settings files I’ve been using for Kahorie’s DK simulator, which might save some time or let you [ more...]

Unholy has changed: no reaping

Oct 9th: patch 3.3 will change unholy again, back to a spec with reaping, epidemic and a traditional deep unholy build. For Unholy in patch 3.3: read my full analysis.

The below is [ more...]

3.3 Death Knight dual-wield tanking

Dec 9th, correct for patch 3.3.

Can and should a DK dual-wield as a tank? Patch 3.22 made it possible, with rune strike now being effected by Threat of Thassarian. Patch 3.3 [ more...]